The decision has
not come as a surprise. However, I was quite surprised at the ground given for
rejecting the application.

City Hall’s letter said :-

How could DBKL
give such an excuse when it was reported that food giant Nestle celebrated its
100th anniversary at the iconic square for two days, on March 18 and 19?

I therefore
support the Bersih Committee’s decision to hold the event at Dataran Merdeka as
planned.

A development
which has quite surprised me though was Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin
Hussein’s view on the coming sit in protest.

He said that the
event did not pose a
security threat to the nation, adding that the civil rights movement’s demands
had gained little traction with the public.

“April 28 is not
an issue,” he told reporters.

He is certainly
right to say that the event is not a security issue though many Malaysians can still recall
how the historic 709 rally last year was handled by the government with water
cannons and arrests.

PM must intervene

The sealing of
all roads leading to the Dataran on the orders of the KL Mayor Tan Sri Ahmad
Faud is irresponsible and unacceptable.

Dataran belongs to all and sundry. The
Prime Minister must intervene and order the Mayor to lift the ban on Dataran
and advice the police to act in civil manner when the Bersih 3.0 “duduk dan bantah”
proceeds. If the PM fails to do this it only goes to demonstrate, he has failed
to keep to his promise of political reforms he stated on September 16, 2011.

I am very
confident that Bersih 3.0 demands
have strong support from Malaysians. The coming general election is going to be
the most important election in the nation’s history.

We need to ensure
that the impending elections will be a free, fair and clean election.

Hence, we are in total support for
Bersih’s 8 demands which are:-

1) Clean
the electoral roll

2)Reform postal voting

3) Use of indelible ink

4) A minimum campaigning period of 21 days

5) Free and fair access to mainstream media

6) Strengthen public institutions

7) Stop corruption

8) Stop dirty politics.

In the last 10
days we have distributed Bersih 3.0 pamphlets at wet markets and at pasar
malams all over Ipoh
areas. The purpose of the distribution was meant both as an awareness campaign
and urging people to attend the Bersih 3.0 event.

I therefore call
on Malaysians to give full support to Bersih 3.0 sit in protest and make 428 a
historic day in the struggle for free, fair and clean elections in Malaysia.

40,000 people
took part in the 2007 Bersih Rally and 50,000 people participated in last
year’s Bersih 2.0 Rally.

For those
Perakians who can’t make it to KL, don’t worry as the local NGO’s are organizing
one in Ipoh. It
will be similar to the KL do and it will be held at Polo Ground between 2-4pm
on 28thApril2012. In any case, we call all to wear yellow on the 28th
and every Saturday until EC overhauls the electoral process.

Bersih’s Perak
representatives Augustine Antony has confirmed that the usage of Polo Ground
has been approved by all concerned.